Hong Kong is cutting the tax on high-end liquor in order to somehow boost tourism. And now it’s thinking about reducing the minimum age for admission to horse-races…
Secretary for Culture, Sports, and Tourism Kevin Yeung on Monday told an RTHK programme that the government was in talks with the Hong Kong Jockey Club, the body behind the city’s horse racing sports and betting, about promoting the sport as a unique characteristic of the city to tourists.
Local media reports on Monday suggested that authorities were considering lowering age restrictions for attending horse races, which currently bars those aged 18 or below from entering racecourses. When asked about the proposal, Yeung said it had to be “carefully considered.”
“I think we have to see things holistically, it can’t be that everything is not restricted. Sometimes we need to be practical and realistic, and we may need to lift restrictions when it is needed. But we will discuss this [with the Jockey Club],” Yeung said…
Standard story here. There’s a Singapore angle.
(‘It can’t be that everything is not restricted, but sometimes we need to be practical and realistic’ is classic bureaucrat. Yeung is a career civil servant who was Education Secretary under Carrie Lam and seems to be having a hard time in the new all-patriots/ex-cops administrative order. As one of our esteemed commenters notes, he is under pressure to deliver more tourism/creative hub-zone successes even while other officials work on destroying an authentic attraction at the Flower Market in Kowloon. Maybe he could go rogue and suggest a serious cost-benefit analysis to see what, if anything, tourism actually contributes on a net basis to GDP.)
What other vices can we push to various age groups? Prostitution? Smoking? Porn? (Don’t forget panda porn.) Opium? Lots of economic opportunities to grasp. Plus Arabic-speaking taxi drivers to guide Middle Eastern visitors through it all. We could bury Macau.
It was good to see horse-racing finally ended in Singapore recently, after about 200 years. It’s a barbaric sport made even worse by rising temperatures. This trend of official monetising of animal exploitation – horses, pandas – is sad.
The morality of monetizing beasts (personally, I don’t eat anything with a pulse) is not really a factor in discussions such as this. Taking the kids to see the ponies run around could be a pleasant diversion. I go on occasion and neither wager nor drink to excess. It’s a nice way to spend some time with the lads / out-of-towners / colleagues / senior management (in a box, of course). Unfortunately, I have no faith the local administration could put together something appealing – look at the Flower Market, Kai Tak, Good Vibes, etc debacles. It’s all moot anyway. It is the members’ club after all, and non-punting / non-drinking children and families would hardly benefit their vested interests.
Cultural woes continue as Russian pianist denied a visa for his concert at the Cultural Centre next month… Russia earlier branded Evgeny Kissin a “foreign agent” for his pro-Ukraine compositions. Obviously Hong Kong’s monkey-killer cultural boss did not have the clout to override Immigration on this obscene censorship of a musical performance.